It was an early start, 5am on Boxing Day as we headed to Gatwick, we'd paid to park on someone's drive which turned out to be a field (I didn't think they had fields in London either!). Tim's nice new shiny white trainers are no longer shiny or white.
Once at the airport Tim asked everyone remotely involved in the operation of the airport for an upgrade. It did work though and a pair of legroom seats were ours for the 12 hour flight ahead.
Mark had his last meal at the airport taking the opportunity to grab a burger before starting his two week diet trying to find something other than noodles and rice to eat.
Our pilot was a bit of a ninja and made up an hour by utilizing some shortcut or something, so we touched down after 11 hours of not sleeping properly which made it 6am local time, we were a little tired to say the least. We went through passport control first which was lucky as it seems that the customs man decided that he'd let his family through after us, and he has quite a lot of family! At the carousel we waited for ages for Tim's case, in fact we were starting to panic a little and then Tim realised that his case was one of the first off and it had been going round and round for about 15 minutes.
We'd done a lot of research into which cab firms to use as quite a lot of people will try to rip you off, we knew what firms to use, how much to pay and how to handle it. This all went out of the window as as soon as we walked outside we'd agreed an extortionate price with some old dude to get in his clap trap of a car that would give Rover a run for their money on shitiest car ever made. It looked like it would fall apart.
2 minutes down the road, it fell apart. After a crunching noise on a gear change, the car slumped to one side and we looked out of the side window to see one of our wheels rolling off down the road, we officially had 3 wheels on our wagon. The cab driver didn't see the funny side so much as we jumped out and hailed down one of the proper cabs that were on our white list.
The rest of the journey to the hotel was just as interesting as the rules of the road that we're used to went out of the window. Traffic lights don't mean anything, one way roads are not one way, and no one has right of way!
We made it alive to the hotel by about 7:30am, but we couldn't check in until 2pm, so the ridiculously thin woman on reception recommended all of her families restaurants for us to go and eat in to kill the time. We decided to see the sights and went for a stroll. This however meant crossing the roads, which is no easy feat, we'll do a video on this over the next few days as it involves a blind leap of faith. You sort of wait for the traffic to thin a bit and then step out, don't look at the cars and bikes flying towards you, so long as you maintain a constant pace then they'll go around you. If you stop or change direction however, you're dead.
By 9:30 we'd seen all the sights of Saigon, some church thing, a post office, Reunification Palace and so on, but that was ok, the next 4 hours would be spent fending off the street peddlers who try to sell us sunglasses despite us already wearing a pair each. There are also a lot of shoe shine people who constantly want to clean Mark's once white trainers, one look at them and you can see the shame on their faces and they really have a need to clean them!
We stopped for our first authentic meal. Tim had some spring rolls in a sauce and Mark ordered some bread and chips, well at least he would have but they decided to ignore his order and just kept bringing him forks instead while Tim stuffed his face. Eventually after reordering, his food turned up (with another fork) so we tucked in.
An interesting theme throughout the day has been how Mark has been treated like a second class citizen compared to Tim. Taxi cab drivers, hotel staff, waiters, etc immediately rush up to carry his luggage or pander to his pretentious needs while Mark is left standing there and has to fend for himself
Back at the hotel we were finally allowed into the room which is ok but a little small with no space for clothes, so we'll be living out of our cases for two weeks. The towels are also so small that you can't quite wrap them around your waist, although after Mark's diet, that shouldn't be a problem - on a positive point it will prevent Tim from indulging in his hobby of towel whipping anyone in the vicinity.
Sleep is needed now, it's been a long double length day, so we're allowing ourselves a couple of hours to catch up before having the traditional first night out which involves getting completely smashed.
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